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Warriors taunt each other when they fight. If the man on the ground can still speak, this is the moment for his final defiance. And perhaps he does gasp something out. But the golden-haired youth laughs.The high, shrill sound echoes upwards. He puts the point of his long red blade to the man’s throat, and shoves it in. Kwimu shuts his eyes. Only a blink, but when he opens them again, it’s over.
He turns his face away, and freezes. That child—the child the man in green was trying to save! He hasn’t run off; he’s peering round the corner of the nearest house, clutching the sod walls with both hands, craning his neck to see what’s happening. He sees the dead man, and shrinks like a snail when you tap its shell.
The burly chieftain gives orders, pointing this way and that. His men fan out and start searching between the houses. Kwimu sucks in his bottom lip. They’re hunting for the child. And they’ll find him; there’s nowhere to run.
The child presses against the wall. Any moment now the men will simply come round the building, and there he’ll be.
Then Kwimu almost shouts. The child turns and flings himself at the soft sod wall, digging fingers and toes into the cracks and crannies. He scurries up like a mouse, pulling himself on to the roof just as the nearest man rounds the corner. He lies flat. His light hair and clothes blend with the pale grasses growing on the turf roof, but he’s still completely visible to anyone who glances up. In fact, Kwimu can see one of his feet sticking over the edge.
But the man doesn’t look up. He strides along with his head down, staring at the ground. Kwimu bites his lip, hardly able to breathe. Don’t move. He’s gone, but there’s another one coming. Don’t move!
Neither man looks up. It seems crazy, but they don’t. Kwimu sighs silently, surprised by the strength of his feelings for this strange foreign child. Beside him, Sinumkw shakes with admiring laughter. “That little weasel! To fool all those warriors with one simple trick! Look, they can’t think where he’s gone.”
And it is funny, in a way, seeing the men poking and prodding around the houses, and gazing into the woods, when all the time he’s a few feet above their heads, as still as a sitting bird. All the same, Kwimu’s nails are cutting into his palms by the time the men give up. Maybe their hearts are not really in this search for a small boy. They return to the chief and his golden son, empty-handed.
The chief shrugs. It’s clear he thinks it doesn’t matter much. He gestures to the bodies lying on the ground, and goes on talking to his son. Obediently the men drag the bodies down to the water’s edge. They wade yelling into the cold river, carrying the dead out to the smaller, slenderer of the Serpents, which jerks and snubs at its tether as if outraged at being given such a cargo. One by one, the bodies are tumbled in.
Where’s the child?
Sidling up the roof like a crab.
At least he’s pulled his foot in—no, don’t go near the ridge!
As if he hears, the child sinks down just below the ridge, but he keeps popping up his head and peering over. Kwimu bites his nails in agony. Stop doing that, they’ll see you!
The chief gives another order. Whatever it is, the child on the roof understands: he flattens himself again, and the men troop back to the houses and begin emptying them. Everything is carried out. They stagger down to the river under bundles of furs, and heave them into the belly of the second Horned Serpent, the big one with the eagle’s beak. They bring out gear, pots, sacks, weapons. Shouting, they load up with timber: logs and planks from a pile on the other side of the houses. The creature—vessel: it must be some kind of vessel—sways this way and that as they adjust the cargo till it’s riding level, a lot lower in the water.
“They’re leaving!” Kwimu says with a gasp of relief. “They’re going away!”
Sinumkw makes a brushing movement with his hand: quiet. He watches the scene below with a hunter’s intensity.
At last, all is ready. A small, fat canoe collects the burly chieftain and his golden son—they don’t have to wade through the freezing water. The chieftain hoists himself aboard the big Serpent, but his son is ferried to the smaller vessel, and nimbly leaps aboard. Kwimu shades his eyes. The boy strides up and down, pouring something out of a big pot. He upends the pot, shakes out the last drops, and tosses it overboard. With an arm twined around the Horned Serpent’s painted neck, he leans out and catches a rope that uncoils through the air from the bigger vessel. He knots it at the base of the neck, and jumps down into the waiting canoe. In moments, he’s back with his father.
The men lift out long, thin paddles: it’s as if the Serpent is putting out legs like a beetle. Slowly it turns away from the shore, swinging with the current till it’s pointing out to sea.
Kwimu has never seen paddling like this before, with all the men facing the wrong way. How can they see where to go? But it seems to work. The red and black jipijka’m is crawling away out of the river, loaded with furs and timber, and towing its companion behind it—the red Serpent of the Dead.
So they’re going, and they haven’t found the child. Does he know he’s safe? Kwimu glances down at the roof.
The child is sitting up, staring.
Get down, get down—they might still see you…
But the child gets slowly to his feet. He stands in full view of the river, conspicuous on the rooftop. He lifts his arm, both arms, and starts to wave and scream. He’s dancing on the roof, yelling in a shrill voice.
“He mocks his enemies!” says Sinumkw in deep appreciation.
But Kwimu isn’t so sure. He’s got a cold feeling that if he could understand, the child might be screaming, “Come back, come back! Don’t leave me!”
For a second, the crawling motion falters as some of the men lift their arms to point. Then it picks up again. They’re not stopping; they’re not turning. They’re leaving the river now, heading into the bay. There’s still a lot of haze on the water; you can’t see the horizon.
They’re doing something else now: casting off the rope. A feather of fire flies through the air, curving into the red Serpent. A moment later, flames splutter fiercely up.
“Oil.” Sinumkw nods. “They poured in oil to make it burn.”
Kwimu can actually hear it, crackling like a hundred spits. Black smoke pours up in a tall column. The neck and proud horned head show clearly, but the long serpent body seems writhing in flames.
Down below, the child is scrambling off the roof. He drops the last few feet and goes racing down over the ravaged grasslands towards the beach.
“Let’s get him!” Kwimu turns to Sinumkw. “Please, Nujj…”
His father shakes his head. “No.”
“Oh, please, Nujj. He’s only little, and he’s brave…”
“A bear cub is little and brave,” says Sinumkw grimly, “and if you take one for a pet, it will grow up into a big bear and claw your arm off.”
Kwimu swallows. “I know, but…can we leave him to die?”
“They have.” Sinumkw nods towards the bay. “He’s not one of the People, Kwimu. Not one of us.”
“You like him, though,” says Kwimu desperately. “You laughed at the way he tricked the warriors. See—Fox approves!” Fox twists his head and licks Kwimu’s hand suddenly, as though to encourage him. Kwimu hardly dares to go on, but the words come anyway, forcing their way up from deep inside him, like a spring of water that has to bubble out. “He might become your son, Nujj. My brother.”
Sinumkw looks at him. His chest rises and falls in a sigh. “Well, we can try. Perhaps the cub is young enough to tame. Don’t be surprised if he bites you.”
They turn, for the slope ahead is too steep to descend, and it will be necessary to go back into the woods and find another way down. Kwimu casts a backward glance at the burning vessel, and is in time to see it tip up and slide neatly backwards under the water. The snarling serpent head vanishes last, and then it’s as though it has never existed, except for the smoke drifting higher and higher, a fading stain against the sky.
The other jipijka’m is already out of the bay and turning up the gulf towards the open sea; and from this distance it looks more like a serpent than ever—a living serpent, swimming quietly away through the haze.
Down on the shingle, nine-year-old Ottar, young son of Thorolf the Seafarer, stands knee-deep in the cold waves. Tears pour down his cheeks. He’s alone, orphaned, desperate, stranded in this horrible place on the wrong side of the world. He hears a shout from the beach behind him. He turns, his heart leaping in wild, unbelieving hope. Somehow it’s going to be all right—it’s been a bad dream or an even worse joke—and he won’t even be angry. He’s going to run to whoever it is, and cling to them, and sob until the sobbing turns into laughter.
And then he sees. His mouth goes dry. Coming towards him on the rising ground between him and the houses are two terrible figures. Their long hair is as black as pitch, and tied with coloured strings. Their clothes are daubed with magic signs. Furs dangle from their belts. They are both carrying bows. But the frightening thing—the really frightening thing about them—is that you can’t see their expressions at all. Half of their faces are covered in black paint, the other half in red. Their eyes glitter white and black.
“Skraelings!” Ottar whispers. “Dirty Skraelings!”
He prepares to die.
CHAPTER 2 Water Snake (#ulink_6a6d16ab-c364-527b-a842-6a91932a7723)
The green sea wrapped itself round Peer Ulfsson’s waist, and rose to his chest with a slopping sound. “Yow!” he yelled. As the wave plunged past he sucked in his breath, and bent quickly to look through the water.
There! In the heaving, brown-green glimmer he saw it: the hammer he’d dropped, lying on the stones. He groped with his arm, his fingers closed on the handle, and the next wave swept past his ears and knocked him over. There was a dizzy moment of being rolled backwards in a freezing froth of bubbles and sand. He struggled up, spluttering but brandishing the hammer in triumph.
“Got it!”
“So I see.” Bjørn’s face was one wide grin. “If you’d tied it to your wrist like I told you, you wouldn’t have had to do that. Get dressed; you look like a plucked chicken.”
Peer laughed through chattering teeth. He bounded back to shore and dragged his discarded jerkin over his head, fighting wet arms through the sleeves. It fell in warm folds almost to his knees, and he hugged his arms across his chest. “Aaah, that’s better. I’ll leave my breeches till I’ve dried off a bit…What’s that? Who’s shouting?”
Torn by the wind, an alarmed cry had reached his ears. He couldn’t make out the words. Up on the jetty Bjørn stiffened, shading his eyes to look down the fjord. “It’s Harald. He’s seen a ship.Yes—there’s a strange ship coming.”
Peer jumped up beside Bjørn, noticing with pride how firm and solid the jetty was. The two of them had been building it for almost a month now, in between their other work, and in Peer’s opinion it made the tiny beach at Trollsvik look like a proper harbour. It was a stout plank walkway between a double row of posts. Bjørn’s new faering, or fishing boat, bobbed beside it.
He joined Bjørn at the unfinished end, where the last few planks waited to be nailed down. It was late afternoon, the tide flowing in. Out where the shining fjord met the pale spring sky he saw a large, reddish sail, square-on, and the thin line of an upthrust prow like the neck of a snail. A big ship running into Trollsvik before the wind.
“Who is it?” he blurted.
Bjørn didn’t take his eyes off the ship. “I don’t know. Don’t know the sail. Could be raiders. Best not take chances. Run for help, Peer. Tell everyone you can.”
A lonely little village like Trollsvik could expect no mercy from a shipful of Viking raiders if they took the place by surprise. The best thing was to meet them with a show of force. Peer turned without argument. Then he saw a scatter of people hurrying over the dunes. “Look, Harald’s raised the alarm already. Here he comes, with Snorri and Einar…”
“Hey, Harald!” Bjørn bawled at the top of his voice. “Whose ship is that?”
A bandy-legged man with straggling grey hair raised an arm in reply as he puffed across the shingle and climbed painfully on to the jetty. “No idea,” he wheezed, bending double to catch his breath. “I was cleaning my nets—looked up and saw it. Shouted at you and ran for the others.You don’t know it, either?”
“Not me,” said Bjørn. Peer looked at the ship—already much closer—then back at the little crowd. Most of the men had snatched up some kind of weapon. Snorri One-Eye carried a pitchfork, and old Thorkell came hobbling along with a hoe, using the handle as a walking stick. Einar had a harpoon. Snorri’s fierce, grey-haired wife Gerd came limping after him over the stones, clutching a wicked-looking knife. Even Einar’s two little boys had begun piling up big round stones to throw at the visitors. Peer wondered if he should join them.Then he realised he was holding a weapon already. His hammer.
He hefted it. It was long-handled and heavy. The dull iron head had one flat end for banging big nails in. The other end tapered to a sharp wedge. When he swung it, it seemed to pull his hand after it. As if it wanted to strike.
Could I really hit anyone with this? He imagined it smashing into someone’s head, and sucked a wincing breath.
The neighbours were arguing. “No need to fear!” yelled Gerd, lowering her knife. “See the dragonhead? That’s Thorolf’s ship, that is, the old Long Serpent that Ralf Eiriksson sailed on.”
“It never is!” Snorri turned on his wife. “Thorolf’s been gone two years now, went off to Vinland.”
“So what?” Gerd was undaunted. “He can come back, can’t he?”
“Fool of a woman,” Snorri shouted. “That’s not his ship, I say!”
“How d’you know?” Gerd shrilled.
“Because this one’s as broad in the beam as you are, that’s why—the Long Serpent was narrower…”
“That isn’t the Long Serpent,” said Peer. “I should know. My father helped to build her.”
“This ship looks like a trader,” Einar said. “Built for cargo, not war.”
“That’s all very well, Einar. Plenty of traders turn into raiders when it suits them—doesn’t mean her crew won’t fight.”
“What do you think, Bjørn?” asked Peer in a low voice.
Bjørn gave him an odd glance, half-humorous, half-sympathetic. “I don’t know, Peer. Let’s just put on a good show and hope they’re friendly.”
Peer stood unhappily clutching his hammer. The ship was so close now that he could see the sea-stains on the ochre-red sail. The hull was painted in faded red and black stripes. A man stood in the bows, just behind the upward swoop of its tall dragon-neck.
We could be fighting in a few minutes. A gull shrieked, swooping low overhead and its keen cry made him jump. Odd to think that the gull might soon be swinging and circling over a battle, and that its shrieks might be joined by the screams of wounded or dying men and women. I might die… And with a jump of his heart he thought of his best friend Hilde, safe for the moment at her father’s farm on Troll Fell. What if he never saw her again? And what would happen to her if these men were dangerous?
There was a flurry of activity on board. The yard swung and tipped, spilling wind. Down came the sail in vast folds. Oars came out to guide the ship in. Behind Peer and Bjørn, the villagers bunched like sheep.
The man in the bows leaned out, cupped a hand round his mouth and yelled, “Bjørn!”
Bjørn threw his head up. “Arnë!” he shouted back. “Is that you?”
Arnë, Bjørn’s brother! The villagers broke into relieved, lively chatter. Peer unclenched stiff fingers from the haft of his hammer. He wouldn’t have to use it as a weapon after all. And a good thing, too, said a secret little voice at the back of his head, because you know you couldn’t have hit anyone.
The thought bothered him. Was it true? Would he be no good in a fight? The word coward brushed across his mind. Then, with a shrug that was half a shudder, he dismissed the idea. It didn’t matter now.
“The ship’s called Water Snake,” Arnë shouted across the narrowing gap of water. “Gunnar Ingolfsson’s the skipper. I’ve brought him here to meet Ralf Eiriksson.”
“Who’s this Gunnar? Why does he want Ralf?” Peer wondered aloud, as the ship closed on the jetty.
“Gunnar Ingolfsson. Gunnar…” Bjørn snapped his fingers. “He’s the man Thorolf took on as a partner, a couple of years ago. Got a name as a sea rover, a bit of a Viking. Thorolf and he sailed off to Vinland together in two ships. So what’s he doing here, and why’s Arnë with him?”
Peer shrugged. He wasn’t curious about Arnë.
“Vinland? Vinland?” muttered Einar. “Where’s that?”
“Don’t you remember?” Snorri said helpfully. “A few years back, Ralf and Thorolf got blown off course and found a new land all covered in forests…”
“The land beyond the sunset,” Peer said eagerly.
“I knew that,” Einar huffed, “but I thought they called it Woodland.”
“They did!” Snorri waved a triumphant finger. “But other ships went there and found vines. Vines, Vinland, see? It’s all the same coast. This Gunnar must be making a second trip. I’ve heard you can bring back a fortune in timber and furs and grapes. I’ve got half a mind to go myself.”
“Ho, yes,” scoffed Einar. “And how would you know what a grape looks like? Have you ever seen one?”
“Arnë’s a wild one,” Bjørn said to Peer. “What’s he done with his fishing boat? Sold it, I suppose, to join this trip. Well, he’s crazy, that’s all.”
“He always wanted to go a-Viking,” Peer pointed out.
“I know.” Bjørn grinned suddenly. “That’s why I say he’s crazy!”
Peer nodded. And that’s why Hilde likes him, he thought, as a black-edged cloud slipped over the sun. The hills and the shore and the flashing water lost their colours. The jetty he had taken such pride in suddenly seemed a rough-and-ready thing of no interest. He wished he could do something exciting or brave.
How was it that Arnë always managed to do things that would impress Hilde? Of course, it helped that he was tall, strong and good-looking. And seven years older than Peer—girls took older men more seriously. If he’s sailing off to Vinland, I won’t get a word in this evening, then. She’ll be talking to Arnë all night.
The big ship came nudging up to the jetty. Seven or eight men were busy on board, stowing the yard fore and aft, lifting the oars in, collecting their gear. Arnë threw a rope up to Bjørn. “Nice new jetty,” he called, laughing. “Did you build it specially for us? It’s good, this’ll be easier for Astrid.”
“Astrid?”
“The skipper’s wife.”
Everyone stared. Peer got a glimpse of a girl in a blue cloak, huddled under an awning which had been rigged up behind the mast. Arnë climbed on to the jetty and wrung Bjørn’s hand. He clapped Peer on the shoulder and said, “Fancy a voyage to Vinland?” before turning to offer a helping hand to the girl. She was finding it difficult, clutching some kind of pouch or bag. A giant of a fellow with a shock of almost white fair hair tried to boost her up from the ship.
Peer watched scornfully. Hilde wouldn’t need helping out of a boat. She’d just kilt up her dress and jump out, laughing!
Hilde, Hilde! She teased Peer, bossed him about, and drove him crazy. Last spring, he’d made the mistake of impulsively kissing her, and she’d laughed at him. He hadn’t dared to do it since, except in dreams.
